Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (30 page)

Bubba Ray talked for about forty minutes, and by the time he got through, I had enough sewage on these two fine, upstanding employees of the Tennessee Workmen’s Protective Association to have a shot at a Pulitzer Prize nomination if I was still in the newspaper biz. It was simply a matter of what I wanted to do with it. I
sent Bubba Ray Evans on his way with a warning that I had his confession on tape, had saved all his death threats off the answering machine, and that if I ever saw his sorry ass again, he was going to be stamping out license plates for so long he’d wish he was back in that wheelchair.

I shut down my office and headed back across the river. In my apartment, I had a small bookshelf stereo system whose one bell-and-whistle was that it had a tape player with two decks. I copied off all the death threats onto one tape, then copied Bubba Ray’s statement. I didn’t figure it’d hold up in court, given the circumstances that it was taken under, but by God, it’d make a hell of a newspaper headline.

I pulled out my White Pages and thumbed through the As until I found Phil Anderson’s address. I scratched it down on a notepad, then changed back into a coat and tie. By seven-thirty, I was on my way to West Nashville with a pocket full of fun.

Phil Anderson’s brown aggregate driveway probably cost more than my car. I glanced around at the neighborhood full of custom houses and wondered what it would do to Phil’s spot in the homeowners’ association to have my rustbucket Mazda parked behind his wife’s Volvo.

I rang the doorbell and stood quietly, trying to keep my pulse down to a safe range. I heard soft footsteps, then a pretty but tired-looking woman with a toddler in her arms answered the door. A blue bandanna held her hair back from her forehead.

“Hello,” she said through the storm door.

“Hi,” I said, smiling as sweetly as I could pull together. “My name’s Harry James Denton, and I’m looking for Phil Anderson. Is he available?”

“Sure,” she said. “Let me get him.” Obviously, Phil hadn’t trained his wife to protect him as well as his secretary. She held open the door for me as I stepped onto the parqueted foyer. The foyer faced up onto a great
room, with maybe twenty-foot ceilings above. A crystal chandelier made up of about a thousand pieces of glass hung over my head. The steps leading down from the landing stopped at a carpeted hallway.

She went down those steps and stopped at the hallway. “Phil,” she called, “company!”

She turned and walked past me upstairs. “If you’ll excuse me now, I’m trying to get this one down.”

“I understand. Thanks.”

I heard steps from below, then Phil Anderson was at the foot of the stairs in a pair of worn jeans, a T-shirt, and an unfolded newspaper flapping from one hand. His smile disappeared when he saw me on the landing.

“Harry,” he said.

I plastered the biggest golly-glad-to-see-you grin on my face you’ve ever seen. “Hey, Phil!” I said brightly. “We have to talk.”

Phil Anderson sat forward in his BarcaLounger and rubbed his eyes, discouraged, as I punched the stop/eject button and retrieved the tape.

“Well, well, well,” he said. Then he let loose with a long sigh that faded to silence after a couple of seconds. I noticed that his thick Mississippi fieldhand brogue was nowhere to be found. The rhythm and cadence of his speech was now patrician, well educated.

“What are we going to do about this?” he asked.

I flipped the tape over to him and sat back down on the leather couch in front of a projection television that seemed about as big as a Volkswagen.

“That’s a copy for your records,” I said. “I’ve got the original stashed away.”

He looked up from his lap, where he’d been staring at the tape like it was going to bite him. “Hell, Harry, you don’t have to do that. What do you think we’re going to do, break in and steal it?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You said it, not me.”

He picked the tape up and studied it. “Well, turkey snot, I guess we had that one coming.”

“Listen, Phil, I—”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Harry,” he interrupted. “What’s this going to cost me? If I’m going to be blackmailed, I’d like to get the bill up front.”

The hair on the back of my neck went on point. “Damn it, Phil, you’ve been spending too much time around guys like Rick Harvey and Steve White! I don’t blackmail people.”

“You don’t?”

“No, all I want is what’s coming to me. Pay my invoice, that’s all. The bill was fair, you agreed to it before I ever started the job, and that’s all I want.”

He stared at me in what could almost be described as amazement. “That’s all?” he asked.

“That’s it in terms of money. I’d appreciate the chance to work with you again. You got any more work, send a little of it my way every now and then. You’ve seen what I can do when I set my mind to it.”

He laughed. “Oh, hell, yes, I’ve seen that, all right.”

“And there’s one other thing,” I said.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “I figured there’d be a catch in there somewhere.”

“Fire those two assholes,” I said. “Fire ’em cold. No termination. No notice. No unemployment. No recommendations. And if I were you, I’d have a security guard watch while they clean out their desks. That way, you won’t turn up with any office supplies—or computer disks—missing.”

Phil Anderson settled back in the easy chair again. “I’m insulted that you’d even think it was necessary to mention that part. Don’t worry, those two are history. Say, Harry, why don’t you come to work for me? I can make you a nice package. Salary and benefits—retirement, vacation, profit sharing. The insurance business’ll treat you pretty well.”

A steady paycheck, paid vacation. Jeez, it had been a
while since I’d had anything like that. On the other hand, with the exception of a few bad times, I relished what I was doing these days.

“Why don’t I take a pass on that one for now, Phil. I’ve got another case I’m working pretty hard. Couple of other minor matters on my mind right now. But let’s stay in touch.”

“Okay,” he said, pulling himself up out of the chair. “Why don’t I have a check messengered over to your office tomorrow morning?”

“That’ll be great. I’ll be in the office by eight-thirty,” I answered.

Phil’s good-ol’-boy accent was coming back now. “Hot damn,” he drawled. “First thing in the morning. And Harry, I really appreciate you not going to the police or the newspapers or anything else on this.”

I smiled and stuck out my hand. “My pleasure, Phil. Glad we could settle this between us, man-to-man.”

Phil led me to the front door and slapped me heartily on the back as we parted company.

“Hey, Harry,” he called as I walked down the driveway. “What in the Sam Hill kinda car is that?”

“That’s a Mazda Cosmo,” I said. “Very rare …” I opened the driver’s side door with a long, rusty squeak and got in. As I fired up the car and smoked my way out of his driveway, I could see him standing there, shaking his head.

“Well,” I said out loud as I pulled onto Sawyer Brown Road headed for Charlotte Pike, “maybe I’m beginning to figure this
bidness
out.”

The thought of five grand coming to me in about twelve hours made the drive back to East Nashville a whole lot easier. Most of the money would be gone before I even got to look at it, but at least I’d be caught up and back to ground zero.

Life was peaches and cream as I crossed the river and hit Gallatin Road toward Inglewood. I decided to celebrate. This time I’d go to Mrs. Lee’s and have one of the eight-dollar dinners rather than the usual four-dollars-and-change special. There are simply times in a man’s life when he needs to get as crazy as an outhouse rat, and this was one of them. Steamed dumplings, sweet-and-sour soup, here I come.

It was nearly nine by the time I pushed the heavy plate-glass door open and entered the restaurant. There was a new red-and-green neon sign out front that blinked
LEE’S SZECHUAN PALACE
. I’d never known the restaurant had a name beyond Mrs. Lee’s. Business must be good, although you couldn’t tell it from inside the restaurant right now. A couple sat alone over disposable plates in the corner, heads huddled so close together that they had to be either hard-of-hearing or in love.

There was no one at the counter, although that wouldn’t have been that unusual this time of night. Mrs. Lee was probably in the back helping her husband with the cleanup chores. I felt a brief pang of guilt as I pondered how hard these people worked: fourteen-hour
days, six days a week, which used to be seven until Mrs. Lee’s health started to show the strain. Nowadays, at least, they took Sunday off.

Through an access window, I could see Mr. Lee, his five-foot, one-hundred-and-ten-pound frame bent over an industrial stainless-steel sink scrubbing out a shiny metal pan the size of a washtub. Sweat soaked through the back of his white T-shirt as his thin, sinewed arms wrestled with the metal.

I watched him through the window for a minute or so until the kitchen door swung open outward and Mary Lee walked through. She was taller than her mother, nearly as tall as me, and athletically thin. Her skin was unblemished, just this side of honey-colored, and her dark almond eyes were almost perfectly symmetrical. Her long black hair hung straight and shiny to the middle of her back. To top it off, she’s smart as a whip. Last year, she came damn close to busting fifteen hundred on her SATs, and I was convinced she’d be off to college next year on a big fat scholarship.

Excuse me, I wax disgusting here. To my own very little credit, I had kept my torch for her properly concealed as well as carried and had never been anything but appropriately civil with her.

“Harry!” she squealed as she saw me. She took two quick steps toward the counter and bent over to wrap her arms around me.

“Hi, sweetie,” I said, when we’d separated. “How ya doing?”

“Fine. I haven’t seen you in here in over a week. Thought you got tired of us.”

“Never,” I said. “I figured I’d give you a break, that’s all.”

Her eyes were bright and danced in the harsh fluorescent light, although there were circles under them that I’d never seen before.

“Don’t be crazy. I’m always glad to see you.”

I looked up at the clock. “What’re you doing working here so late? No school tomorrow?”

Mary leaned against the cash register. “It’s Mom’s high blood pressure again. Doc put her to bed for a couple of days. I’m worried about her.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said. “She works too hard. You all do.”

“Hey,” she piped, “somebody’s gotta keep it going, right?” She picked up a green order pad. “Besides, I’d rather be here than home. Mom raises hell when the doctor tells her to lie still. What can I get for you?”

“Aw, listen, Mary, if it’s too late, you guys are already shutting down—”

“Don’t be silly. That’s what we’re here for. Although I think there may not be any chicken left. I’ll have to check.”

“That’s okay. I’m going to try something different tonight. Got any sweet-and-sour soup left? Dumplings?”

“Yeah on both counts.”

“Let me have the Kung Bao beef dinner,” I said, reading off the menu, “and some iced tea.”

Mary scribbled the order down. “My, oh my, we
are
splurging tonight.”

“I’m celebrating cracking a big case,” I said.

She ripped the sheet off the notepad and slipped it under a clip on a rotating wheel in the top of the access door. Then she rolled the wheel around so my order was inside the kitchen and said something to her father through the hole.

“One of these days, you’re going to have to teach me that,” I said. “How long would it take me to learn Chinese?”

She turned and grinned. “We speak a fairly simple Mandarin dialect,” she said. “I’d say if you started right now and worked real hard, practiced every day, I’d say maybe, I don’t know, ten years or so. Yeah, ten years. You could make yourself sort of understood by then.”

“Ten years?”
I said. “Forget it, I’m too old.”

She giggled. “Oh, yeah, right. Say, Harry. I’m going to need a summer job, and I’d sure like it to be something else besides this. How’s about I come work for you? I’d like to be a private detective for a while.”

Something in my chest lurched. I didn’t think my working with Mary Lee was a very good idea; the last thing in the world I needed was a gorgeous seventeen-year-old Amerasian girl sharing a one-room office with me.

But I wasn’t going to tell her that. “I probably can’t afford you, Mary. Besides, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be in the movies. It’s pretty tedious most of the time.”

She leaned in close to me. “Oh, like this isn’t?” she stage-whispered.

“Where you going to school next year?” I asked, grabbing at anything possible to change the subject.

“Well, let’s see,” she said, counting off on her fingers, “I’ve got applications in at Tufts, Brown, Columbia, Duke.…”

I chuckled. “Party schools, huh?”

“Yeah, why push myself?” She smiled back with a row of white teeth that lit up the room.

Behind Mary, a tray of food appeared in the window. I suddenly realized I was starving. Mary saw my eyes flick to the window and turned.

“Here we go,” she said. I pulled out the last ten-dollar bill from my wallet and handed it to her, then waited as she got my change.